Enthusiasm for 100% clean electricity in Oregon was high at a legislative hearing on Monday, but opening testimony made it clear the road to consensus, even among supporters, could be bumpy.
House Bill 2021-1 has emerged as the vehicle for the effort, through discussion in the House Energy and Environment Committee and plenty of behind-the-scenes negotiating.
The bill as it stands mandates an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions for investor-owned utilities from a 2010-12 baseline by 2030, then 90% by 2035. By 2040, the companies — Portland General Electric, PacifiCorp and Idaho Power — are required to “seek to provide” 100% emissions-free electricity.
They would accomplish this through clean energy plans scrutinized by the Public Utility Commission.
That’s where the utilities already do least-cost, least-risk resource plans that are in line with existing mandates to be off coal in the next decade and get half their electricity from renewable sources (not counting existing hydropower) by 2040.
Climate activists like the bill’s approach, “with the anticipation of needed amendments coming,” Meredith Connolly, Oregon director for Climate Solutions, told the committee.
In testimony submitted jointly with the Oregon Environmental Council, Climate Solutions called for firming up the 2040 mandate, extending the bill’s ban on new natural gas plants to expansions of current ones, and other changes.
The groups see emissions-reduction as a jobs engine, but how quickly the policy would get projects going and where they would be built is one aspect of the emerging debate.
The climate groups called for requiring continual progress toward the 2030 goal.
“This will ensure near-term actions across a variety of options, including energy efficiency, renewable energy projects, demand response and non-emitting storage, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions sooner,” they said.
The approach has the support of Renewable Northwest, which has many renewable energy groups and companies in its membership. But significant elements in the solar industry aren’t on board.
The Oregon Solar + Storage Industries Association listed 13 issues with the bill, including “a glaring absence of proposals that would support projects built in Oregon.” OSSIA likes the 50% in-state requirement in another 100% clean electricity bill, House Bill 3180.
HB 3180 uses a ramped-up renewable portfolio standard, or RPS, to get to the all-clean goal. NewSun Energy, which does utility-scale projects in the state, is backing that bill.
“The grid will not get greener until new renewable energy gets built, period,” Jake Stephens, NewSun’s CEO, testified.
NewSun commissioned a study from EcoNorthwest that found the combination of a bolstered RPS and in-state build requirements would result in nearly eight times more direct investment in Oregon by 2030 compared to what would come under HB 2021. The report presumed it would take years to implement the emissions approach, which supporters reject.
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Rep. Ken Helm, who has favored the RPS approach, called for input from the PUC on how long implementation might take. Pam Marsh, the committee chair, said that sounded like a good idea.
Another area of criticism of HB 2021-1: provisions giving utilities more regulatory room to do and profit from special arrangements, called green energy tariffs, with communities that want to move faster to reach their own clean energy targets.
OSSIA and the Northwest & Intermountain Power Producers Coalition both called the provisions anti-competitive given the natural monopoly advantages the utilities already have. NIPPC further zeroed in a part of the bill that eliminates the PUC's obligation to “mitigate the vertical and horizontal market power of incumbent utilities.”
“Eliminating this role from the commission’s job description will lead to fewer choices for consumers, fewer businesses participating in the market, fewer alternatives to utilities owning everything, and, ultimately, higher prices for everyone,” the group said in submitted testimony.
Oregon CUB, the state-sanctioned ratepayer watchdog, is generally in support of the bill, though it was called “a work in progress,” by Bob Jenks, the executive director.
“We’re encouraged that this bill does not impose a lot of new costs before 2025 because we have enough to manage,” Jenks told the committee, citing last year’s wildfires, this year’s ice storm, Covid and, especially, exiting coal plants early.
“As we accelerate the coal investment and get those out of rates over the course of the 2020s, there will be more room for additional, affordable investments,” he said.
The utilities haven’t been heard from publicly on the bills,
which are due for more public airing before the Energy and Environment
Committee the middle of next week.
